Vintage HiFi Audio Forum
The Home Theater Corner => Media => Topic started by: OldiesButGoodies on December 02, 2014, 04:07:52 PM
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Anyone here have any experience with this service?
http://tidalhifi.com/us?gclid=CJnol-KRqMICFSIV7AodM0MAgQ (http://tidalhifi.com/us?gclid=CJnol-KRqMICFSIV7AodM0MAgQ)
OBG
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ok, i read your post about a half hour ago, and i tried it, and HOLY SHIT!!! i'm so used to using spotify right now that i forgot what dynamic range was! going to have a long conversation with PBJ (who i share a spotify account with) about switching. i'm blown away!
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I signed up a few months back but never got the promised email about them going past Beta.
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seriously, tidal just gave me a new appreciation for my car. i've been in audio limbo since my speakers are still being built, so this is like the coolest thing for me to cling to right now. i've never heard my car stereo sound this impressive (which is only as impressive as a stock car stereo can be). all of the drums have come to life, and the bass sounds real again. the vocalist doesn't sound like he's in a closet anymore either (except freddie mercury and elton john :P). thanks for posting this pepe; seriously just made my day.
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Sounds promising! I may kill spotify as well if it sounds as good as described by many in the webs. I am stuck doing work, so will not get to it until tomorrow probably. Now you have me salivating.
The price is somewhat high (20 bucks vs 10 for Spotify Premium), but the poor lads in England are even more screwed, with a $31/month tab.
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Any of you gainfully employed folk wanna help a starving college student out and toss me some account info! :P
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Man I wish I had a sub right now. I miss bass.
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Ask to try Pepe's M&K MX 5000. If my setup didn't already do 16 Hz I'd be all over it.
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Thanks Steve! I am going to have to figure out a way to use that sub in the HT as it is not moving in CL. It is really better for music IMO (but the Amazings already have 8 12" woofers doing that job).
I am playing with Tidal side by side with Spotify (at work, using a Focusrite DAC and AKG cans) set at the "high definition" setting which is supposed to be 320Kbps. Tidal sounds better - just not sure it is "twice the price" better. Definitely comparable to CD quality. I hope to try it tonight with the Amazings and the Sunfire. Certainly comparable quality to what I get from Rev's Jriver server playing FLACs.
If any of you find a particularly good track in Tidal that demonstrates the service's full ability please post it here...
Thanks
OBG
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Streaming from Tidal on my Android phone as a test. I don't have a functioning computer. Is the difference between Tidal set to hifi and Spotify premium noticeable on Android phones/tablets? Is hifi setting better than high def?
Can I share the account with my son or wife at the same time?
When I bring up an artist and list all the albums in chronological order on Spotify that's real important to me. How do I get Tidal to do it?
Thx
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Streaming from Tidal on my Android phone as a test. I don't have a functioning computer. Is the difference between Tidal set to hifi and Spotify premium noticeable on Android phones/tablets? Is hifi setting better than high def?
Can I share the account with my son or wife at the same time?
When I bring up an artist and list all the albums in chronological order on Spotify that's real important to me. How do I get Tidal to do it?
Thx
it has to be set to hi-fi, and you want to make sure your phone is on wifi and not on 4g, this thing will drain your data plan in a few hours. from what i can tell on my phone, the hifi setting on tidal beats the hell out of the extreme setting on spotify. the extreme setting on spotify is 320k, whereas hifi on tidal is 1411k. all of the stuff i pull up is generally in chronological order; it may just be a select few artists where it is screwed up. besdies, quite frequently on spotify they put earlier albums later because they get re-mastered. like pantera's 1990 album "cowboys from hell" comes before their 2000 album "vulgar display of power" because it got re-mastered later.
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You guys are probably texting each other from across the room! O0 :(|) >:D :P
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You guys are probably texting each other from across the room! O0 :(|) >:D :P
haha nope, i'm home, as is he i think
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You guys are probably texting each other from across the room! O0 :(|) >:D :P
haha nope, i'm home, as is he i think
Nope, I'm at a brothel. Don't tell your mother. Never mind, they denied me service because of all the nasty open scars
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So, first day with the Tidal trial and still noodling with it. So far, it integrated with Sonos so I can play Redbook CD quality files on any of my systems. That is kind of nice. It seems to have a nice selection of Music, I was able to find some of my favorite tracks like Gene Harris and Harris and Hamilton. It was also nice to find the complete collection from Beegie Adair so it was nice to hear the album Love Elvis.
This part is so far so good.
A couple questions though. Some of the tracks seem to be grayed out and not available. I went back today and they seem available today so I am not sure what is up with that.
It also seems to have a hit or miss search function. Looking for the following Cal Tjador -Time for Love, Cyrus Chestnut - First time Ever and Jimmy Cobb - Ma Turk. Found the Jimmy Cobb today.
I wonder if you can put a playlist together and share it. That would be pretty cool.
I haven't been able to crack the code on hi res playback yet. Everthing going through my Sonos is 16 bit. I think I'll need to run a USB cable from my MacBook to my DAC to listen to hires files. That would be cool but I didn't see that option in the Tidal preferences menu. I can pick internal speakers or air book which defeats the purpose of hires.
More later
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Yeah, I think the grayed out stuff has something to do with distribution rights and regional releases. Sometimes Spotify would show me an album that I couldn't play because that version wasn't released in America, so I assume Tidal has the same issues.
It seems as though I search for something, don't find it, then two days later it's there. I don't know if these guys are just THAT good at seeing what people are looking for and they're tracking it down, or if it's a coincidence, or what, but I'm not complaining about it.
You don't need to worry about going over 16-bit, as Tidal won't do it. Tidal is meant to match CD quality, not anything above. It's just using FLAC files instead of WAV because
a) FLAC takes up less space while providing the same quality
and
b) WAV files are old as hell, so it doesn't handle meta-data and other information as well as a FLAC file, if it will even handle the information at all. When I was working on an album a few years ago, I forgot to put my information in it before I bounced all of the tracks to their final files, and it took me an hour to figure out how to put the content in there without bouncing the files again. Long story short, I ended up bouncing the files again.
Your standard 16-bit/44.1k CD's bit rate is 1,411.2 kbit/s, which is what Tidal puts out in "Hi-Fi mode". Spotify's extreme quality is 320kbit/s, which is what Tidal puts out in "Normal" mode.
It would be very cool if they put 24-bit/48k content on there, but I don't expect it yet, since it's bit rate would be about 2200kbit/s (If my guess math is right).
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Well hell... I guess there's no point in hooking up my DAC. I think I just figured out how to do it. I thought they has 24 bit options...oh well.
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I thought they has 24 bit options...oh well.
Only in a perfect world... 24-bit/48k would be absolutely perfect... hell, 44.1k would be fine.
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It is kind of nice waking up and checking out the what's new section and seeing Pink Floyd Endless River
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Mine "skips". Sometimes frequently, sometimes only occasionally. Ideas?
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Sounds like network issues are you using Airplay?
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no, he's not using airplay.
dad, we'll call Comcast on monday when Xinlei and mom go shopping.
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BJ, are you using airplay?
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PBJ and BJ, a few thoughts:
Based on the week I had access to it, I noticed that the Tidal windows client is a bit of a hog. It does not like other things running simultaneously and that can hurt playback.
Does Netflix run ok on that same PC? Does the skipping go away when you down-shift to the 320 kbps mode (the gearshift icon leads you there)?
If it is Comcast related you may need to get into the router's admin prog and give priority to the PC running Tidal, and even that may not help if the evil Comcast people have figured out a way to throttle dense traffic coming from a particular device.
If you are running Tidal on a Windows machine, try something else, a Mac if you have one, or Apple TV. See if the buffering issues also happen there (you can have a friend over that has a Mac to test this). Idea is to isolate device from Comcast as the cause.
Just a few ideas to consider...
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PBJ and BJ, a few thoughts:
Based on the week I had access to it, I noticed that the Tidal windows client is a bit of a hog. It does not like other things running simultaneously and that can hurt playback.
Does Netflix run ok on that same PC? Does the skipping go away when you down-shift to the 320 kbps mode (the gearshift icon leads you there)?
If it is Comcast related you may need to get into the router's admin prog and give priority to the PC running Tidal, and even that may not help if the evil Comcast people have figured out a way to throttle dense traffic coming from a particular device.
If you are running Tidal on a Windows machine, try something else, a Mac if you have one, or Apple TV. See if the buffering issues also happen there (you can have a friend over that has a Mac to test this). Idea is to isolate device from Comcast as the cause.
Just a few ideas to consider...
He's using a Macbook Air.
Tinpan, I am not using airplay.
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If that is the Air I remember it is first gen, with a really weak processor. It may not be able to run the Tidal app properly. Not sure if the Tidal web client is less processor intensive. Is there a web client like Spotify?At any rate - that Air is good for browsing but may not have enough power to do that kind of streaming.
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Pepe, I'm using the MacBook Air that I got from you. I guess it's no good for Tidal?
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Not saying that definitively, but it is probable that the Tidal app will struggle with that laptop. The original Macbook Air was designed to fit in a manila envelope so Steve Jobs could impress everyone with the thinest machine ever made. But processor speed memory data bus were slow.
If you have not done so already do the usual things to make an old Mac get faster after a months of use - see tips here:
https://gigaom.com/2011/07/26/when-to-reset-your-macs-pram-and-smc/ (https://gigaom.com/2011/07/26/when-to-reset-your-macs-pram-and-smc/)
I would also look at the startup apps and make sure nothing else is running when you are running Tidal, see tips here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/2047747/take-control-of-startup-and-login-items.html (http://www.macworld.com/article/2047747/take-control-of-startup-and-login-items.html)
If you can get it to run just Tidal with everything else off and after doing the SMC/PRAM reset, that may help you determine if it is Comcast or the Mac. All of this advice needs to be run by your CIO, Bearjew, before executing, I am just lowly tech providing free support.
>:D
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Thanks. BJ will be over Monday so he'll check it out
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pepe, thanks for the info. i'll run through all that on monday. i don't have any problems with it on my windows machine, but i'm running an i7.
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The best advice I ever got for playing wireless music was from Tom here on this forum and it was to lose the Mac client to feed my network.
I bought a Synology NAS based on his advice and it solved most of the jitter problems I was having.
I too have Comcast as an internet provider and I have an Apple Airport Extreme for a router. I was using a combination of airport expresses and web tvs to distribute my music to my stereos. That was nothing but 1 big head ache after another. I had nothing but jitter and drop outs. Everytime I wanted to sit down and relax the gxx dxxx apple tvs had to download a gxx dxxx fxxxn firmware patch. You know how long those take. 15 flippin minutes. So...that shiet is gone.
Wanna run flac or alac files from your mac? You have to download amarra or jriver or pure music or fidelio. They take a ton of memory to run, they want money every time the offer a new version...so they are gone for me as well
I'm still using con cast as an IP and I've had no issues with bandwidth. I am still using my Airport Extreme for a router. I do like that since I am network config challenged. My Synology NAS is connected directly to my Airport Etreme so I don't need any computers on to listen to music
The thing that fixed all my drop out and jitter issues was moving to a sonos connect http://www.sonos.com/shop/products/connect (http://www.sonos.com/shop/products/connect)
They are a bit pricey at $350 a pop, I have picked a couple off ebay for under $280. They are nice, you just plug them in, push a button and they work. They seem to stand up a separate wireless network. I can stream music to my garage which is probably 50 yards away from my house. The Apple network doesn't even reach that far.
Just giving you some food for thought. I am liking this Tidal thing. It's like having access to a bunch of Flac files I don't have...and it integrates with the Sonos. It was very easy to use.
Before I spent any money on SW or memory for you mac...I'd take a hard look at trying a sonos. How many systems do you have?
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he has a system in the living room and a small one in the bedroom. i didn't realize that tidal integrates with sonos; that might change things a little bit. i've heard great things about sonos, so i'll have to read up on it more.
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Well, I have spent a few days playing with this and here are my thoughts.
Originally I had planned on doing the trial and stopping there. I don't like the $20 bucks a month fee and it takes me a lot to pony up for something that. I was hoping to drop the service and see if they some back with an offer at half price and I may still do that. So far my favorite streaming service has been jazz radio.com, especially the smooth mellow jazz track, at $8 bucks a month for the hires feed it's a no brainer.
A little late for OBG but I did put a list of 10 songs together here: http://tidalhifi.com/playlist/3ad2cfb6-2a9b-4477-aef3-13b71501b397 (http://tidalhifi.com/playlist/3ad2cfb6-2a9b-4477-aef3-13b71501b397)
It doesn't have about half the songs I would have included because they aren't on Tidal at this point, but, these are still pretty decent.
What it does offer though, is a bunch of music I don't have. To begin with their rip of the 25th anniversary hall of fame concerts is better than the one I ripped from my DVD. I'm not a big fan of MTV's productions but Jeff Beck on this concert was outstanding and him playing Foxy Lady with Billy Gibbons was not to be missed.
Tidal's rip of Gene Harris's This Masquerade is the same as mine. You can hear the same tape noise I hear on my copy I ripped from the CD.
I put together about five tracks of easy listening club music for those late at night quieter listening moments. Then a few with a little more volume.
What is probably pushing me over the endue to ponying up for $20 a month is the amount of music they do have. I like Gene Harris and Scott Hamilton a lot; Randy Halberstadt, Frank Weis and Trio Pim Jacobs. They seem to have an abundance of their music I don't have so that is VERY nice.
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Well now JazzRadio.com has me intrigued. 8)